"Hustvedt is that rare artist, a writer of high intelligence, profound sensuality and a less easily definable capacity for which the only word I can find is wisdom." -Salman Rushdie

Siri Hustvedt is an accomplished novelist, poet, and essayist. She was born and raised in rural Minnesota, the setting of her second novel, The Enchantment of Lily Dahl (1996), which she calls an "allegory of psychic life" played out in a small town. Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times hailed her first novel, The Blindfold (1992), for its "thoroughly original style and lucid contemporary voice." While critics have invoked Kafka and Rilke in describing Hustvedt's writing, she credits her childhood reading of the Brontes and Dickens for inspiring her to become a writer. Like her husband Paul Auster, she portrays a dreamlike world of eerie uncertainty and emotional intrigue. What I Loved (2003), narrated by art historian Leo Hertzberg, scrutinizes the art and academic world of Manhattan with a penetrating but compassionate eye. She also writes on literature, art, and sensuality in the intensely personal essays Yonder (1998), The Mystery of the Rectangle (2005), and A Plea for Eros (2006).

Siri Hustvedt grew up in Northfield, Minnesota. Her father was a professor of Scandinavian literature, and her mother emigrated from Norway at the age of thirty. Hustvedt holds a Ph.D. in English literature from Columbia. She and Paul Auster have a teenage daughter and live in Brooklyn. What I Loved, an international bestseller, won the Prix des Librairies du Quebec for the best foreign book of 2003.